Top 106 Baseball Players: #84 - Chief Bender

Chief Bender

Chief Bender was a great pitcher from the early days of baseball, who was given his nickname due to his membership in the Ojibwe tribe of Minnesota.

Bender was discovered while pitching for a semi-pro team in Pennsylvania after he beat the Chicago Cubs in an exhibition game in 1902, and in 1903 he was a full-time Major League pitcher with the Philadelphia Athletics as a 19-year-old rookie.

Over his first 8 seasons, Bender lowered his ERA every single season, starting with his rookie ERA of 3.07 and continuing until reaching a low of 1.58 in 1910, and that was the season when he was finally able to lead the A's to the AL pennant and the World Series.

He had pitched in the World Series early in his career, and had done well, pitching 2 complete games and giving up only 2 runs, but one of those games was a 3-0 shutout win, while the other was a 2-0 shutout loss to Christy Mathewson and the Giants. This time he was dominant in the Series, pitching a 3-hitter with 8 strikeouts in the opener, with another complete game later in the Series, and earned his first World Series title.

The next year he was back for more, and this time they faced Mathewson and the Giants in the World Series again, and though Mathewson outdueled him in Game 1, Bender earned the win in Games 4 and 6, finishing off the Series with a 1.04 ERA, 20 strikeouts, and 3 complete games, which tied Mathewson's record for the World Series.

After missing a chunk of the next season overcoming problems with alcohol abuse, he returned in 1913 at close to his previous level, and it was enough to get the A's another World Series title, their 3rd in 4 years, though he was not as dominant this time, giving up 8 earned runs in 2 complete games, nearly as many as he had given up in 7 games in his previous 3 World Series seasons.

At the end of the next season, he was offered a much larger contract by the Baltimore Terrapins of the new Federal League, but he struggled, winning only 4 of his 26 starts, and he said openly that he regretted leaving Philadelphia, so he returned to the city the next season as a member of the Phillies, where he wrapped up his career with a couple of mediocre seasons.

While Bender was a very good regular season pitcher, he excelled in the World Series, where he pitched 10 games over 5 different seasons, with 9 complete games and a 2.44 ERA and 3 World Series rings as a result of his play. He was largely overshadowed by Christy Mathewson during his career, but managed to defeat him in 2 of the 3 seasons in which they met in the World Series, and his great play when it mattered most is what earned him this spot on the list of the all-time greats.